The Celtic Football Club – Crest And Colours

Let’s talk about historic uniforms related to this site: the Celtic Football Club’s – for short – home strip features white and green horizontal hoops. However, the original ones consisted of a white top with black shorts and black and green hooped socks – still not too different from their present-day color theme.

The top featured a Marist Brothers’ badge, with a green Celtic cross inside a red circle. Back in 1889, Celtic Football Club changed into a green and white vertically striped top and did so for the following fourteen years. During these, the shorts were alternated between black and white several times, while the top didn’t have any crest.

New Design and a Badge

By 1903, the Celtic Football Club adopted the notorious green and white hooped tops. The design was first worn on August 15, 1903. With regards to socks, the team used black ones until they switched to green by the 1930s.

White socks were implemented by the 1960s and became the predominant color to be worn even today. They began using a club badge in the 1930s – a four-leaf clover logo with the club’s formal title “The Celtic Football and Athletic Coy. Ltd.”

By 1977, the Celtic Football Club finally adopted the badge symbol on their shirts, having the crest wording changed to, simply, “The Celtic Football Club”. But by 1988, during their 100th year, the club used a commemorative crest featuring the Celtic cross that was first used for their shirts.

The Appearance of Numbered Shirts

Today, numbered shirts are commonly used. However, that hasn’t always been the case. It was not until 1945 that numbered shirts came into use throughout Scotland, and became compulsory by 1960.

Celtic Football Club was the last team to adopt such use of numbers to identify players. However, the numbers were only placed on the shorts so as to not disfigure the famous green and white hoops of their shirts. It wasn’t until 1975 that the Scottish Football League directly instructed the team to put the numbers at the back of their shirts.